Hawk Flying Club

Can you see the smile on my face? Can you see the joy shooting out of my ears like fireworks off a bridge? Waiting for our club Cherokee to get out of the shop, I started tail wheel instruction in a Citabria with Chris Dupin at East Coast Aero Club in Bedford. The weather was great, the plane was great, the instructor was great, everything was great. We went to a quiet ramp to practice ground maneuvers for taxiing, then took off and flew along the north edge of Route 128 under the Boston airspace to practice steep turns, slow flight, stalls, and slips. Baby. A Citabria knows how to slip. We practiced take offs and landings at Beverly. Following along on the controls as my instructor took off… Wow. What a thrill. Where I had been punching the rudder pedals with my feet to keep the plane rolling down the runway center line, this man was just tap dancing on the pedals like gentleman in a top hat and tails. To feel the plane come alive in your hands as the controls become responsive as the plane picks up speed, like a balloon expanding and finally lifting itself erect. That is the bond with the machine that I seek. I love our Cherokee, our plane that has been so reliable and so constant, but I think I’ll just duck over here while no one is looking and have a little fling with a Citabria. That’s the great thing about flying with a club like ours: everyone has a story, everyone has an experience, everyone has fun, and every now and then you get to hang out with your friends and hear about it.

Membership in a vibrant flying club opens the door to a variety of new flight experiences through its membership.  This morning I flew with a friend for lunch, and ended up with an introduction to helicopters.

John Young has been a member of the club for as long as I have, and is now a helicopter CFII instructing out of Nashua in Robinson helicopters with a share in a Robinson R-44.  John answered my call for people willing to fly with me on Presidents’ Day, and we decided to fly up to Sanford, Maine, for lunch on what was a cold and windy New England winter morning.  As a pilot, I am enthusiastic boy with plenty of room for improvement, so flying with John is a special treat.

We landed at Sanford for lunch at the airport restaurant — cheese burgers with butter-toasted buns — and John began to explain helicopter flight to me.  Watching out the window, we watched a Twin Bee amphibian pull up to the restaurant.  John noted that it was a multiengine, an amphibian, and a tail dragger, each property requiring a different rating or sign off and each increasing insurance costs dramatically.  Nearing the end of the lunch, John mentioned that his helicopter was up at Laconia, New Hampshire, so we decided to fly over there to see it.

Flying toward Lake Winnipesaukee, we flew north of the Alton Bay ice airport that club member Egbert Woelk wrote about last month, and we admired the patterns of snowmobile tracks covering the snowy surface of every frozen lake in sight.  Landing at Laconia, we walked past a grass parking area filled with snow-covered planes looking forlorn stuck among frozen drifts of snow.  Entering the hanger, we found John’s R-44 sitting next to a smaller R-22.  (And a yellow Ferrari.)

Sitting inside the cockpit and opening access panels outside and climbing over the platform with his helicopter, listening to John, I began to understand his love of helicopters. My greatest moments in airplanes are those moments when I feel at one with the machine, bonded to it, understanding the plane so well that I know what the machine is going to do before it happens, and then getting to watch it happen.  Bonding with a helicopter seems to be a requirement for flight, and not just an opportunity for a fleeting moment of joy.

Flying from Laconia back to Lawrence, Massachusetts, our tailwind at 4500 feet added 40 knots to our ground speed, and we absolutely flew home.  Landing at Lawrence, that tailwind became a strong headwind. It made our landing roll so short that we could easily turn off at the cross runway, which was just as well, because the tower had advised us that the usual taxiway was closed by snow drifting over the frozen tundra of the airport property.  In the bitter cold wind, the snow crunched and the ice cracked under our feet as we walked back to the car.

Another great New England flying adventure.

One of the most unique airports in the country is within thirty minutes of our home airport, Lawrence in Massachusetts. It is Alton Bay on Lake Winnipesaukee. For most of the year Alton Bay (B18) is a seaplane base but in winters when the lake is frozen, Alton Bay turns into a runway for land planes. In years when it is cold enough for long enough Paul LaRochelle, volunteer manager of B18 and his team clear the snow off of the ice and make a runway for regular land airplanes.

On the ramp of the ice runway at Alton Bay.

On a crisp blue winter day flying over Lake Winnipesaukee is spectacular, especially in a small airplane at a thousand feet or so. Snow-covered Mt. Washington is near and a great sight. Near Laconia which is a few miles away are many ice fishing shelters and a few pick-up trucks are on the ice. The islands in the lake dot the white sheet of ice.

Lake Winnipesaukee and Mount Washington in winter.

Back in December 2005, we picked a nice calm winter day to fly out to the ice runway. After enjoying a round of sightseeing of the lake we headed for Alton Bay. It is a great view to see the runway and the taxiway east of it. The winds were light and from the North. We approached form the north and entered the left downwind. On final there is a great view of the Alton Bay village and the bay. Landing feels normal but the brakes have no effect. Final approach therefore should be flown at the slowest possible approach speed and touchdown within the first 200 feet of the runway.

Turning final at Alton Bay.

With tricycle landing gear planes the 180 degree turn from the end of the runway onto the taxiway is definitely tricky especially when the temperature is near the freezing mark and the ice is very, very slippery. Differential braking does not render much of an effect. The rudder pushes the tail in the right direction but at the same time the propeller pulls forward and the wheels put up no resistance. Although we tried our level best, the turn radius of our Cherokee 180 was way to large and we ended up in front of a snow bank. We had to turn off the engine and manually align the plane with the taxiway. This would have been difficult as a single pilot but with two it was no problem.

On the “ramp.”

Once parked on the “ramp” there is usually a number of pilots to talk to. On a nice weekend there is also an interested public out and about who like to look and learn about airplanes and flying. Normally there is a little cafe/restaurant just on the beach to warm up over a cup of hot coffee or tea.

Ready for take-off.

Flying into Alton Bay is a great experience and great fun.

Today I had the chance to watch a glider in aerobatic flight.

We have all been to airshows and watched the best of the best fly planes in ways that should not be possible. Flying straight up into the air, slowing until the plane is just hanging by its teeth from the propeller, falling in a faint to the side with just enough rudder to push the nose over. The whining of engines, the Doppler effect and skillful adjustments to power changing constantly the pitch of the engine. The noise and the smoke and the tumbling and the chaos.

But not in a glider.

A pair of us in our club also belong to the Greater Boston Soaring Club and fly gliders out of Sterling just north of Worcester. Two or three times a year, we take turns running the field coordinating the launch and retrieval of gliders and towplanes and ropes (you can’t fly gliders without a lot of friends on the ground). Today was my day. It was a cold, gusty, New England fall day with broken layers of clouds at 4 and 7 and 10 thousand feet, with breaks in one layer exposing the next, and every now and then the breaks lining up to show a patch of blue at the top.

Waiting for people to show up, I watched a beautifully restored Cessna 120, forest green on white, practice landings in the grass. Soon a Cessna 172 arrived to practice short field landings on the asphalt, those massive flaps and strong headwind and a skillful instructor combining to give a forward speed over the ground so low the plane seemed simply to step out of the air onto the smooth surface and stop. And then gliders started flying, and then a Piper Cub, and then a Citabria, all peacefully sharing space together on the grass. This is the glory of aviation, of pure flight, seen most vividly within the close family of community aviation at a small airport. But the wind was cold and strong and burned the skin on my face. I was longing for the fun to end.

And then two instructors launched to practice aerobatics in the Puchacz, a two-place aerobatic glider called “the Puch” within the club. With everyone watching, they took a tow to 4,000 feet and released. Watchers on the ground took turns narrating. “Okay, clearing turns.” Wait. Wait. Wait. “What are they going to do?” Wait. Wait. “Okay, there it is.” The glider dipped its nose twenty degrees. “Picking up speed.” Wait. “There they go.” The glider lifted its nose, closed its eyes and spread its fifty-foot wings wide, exposed its stomach freely to the heavens, and simply reclined onto its back and completed the loop. So effortless, so graceful, so gentle. So quiet.

After putting everything away, a friend heard the incessant hooting of an owl off in the woods. Puchacz is Polish for “Eagle Owl.” And, of course, that’s a guy who really knows how to fly.

I once went home to Nebraska on vacation and got checked out to fly a Cessna at Silverhawk Aviation at the Lincoln airport.  The instructor asked if I minded flying in the gusty conditions, I said it was fine, and he said, “Good, because if you don’t like flying in wind, you aren’t going to fly in Nebraska.”

We’ve had a summer of calm wind in the Greater Boston area, but Sunday afternoon was one blustery, gusty, old-school, New England fall kind of day.  I had hoped to take my first-grade son up for his first flight that afternoon.  His youth-sized David Clark headsets had arrived in the mail the day before, and he had spent a few minutes that afternoon walking around the living room wearing his new green headsets (he would have preferred purple) speaking into the microphone silly things like “Captain Daddy!  Captain Daddy!  All seat belts are fastened!” and assuring me that he would be able to hear me if I spoke directly into the plugs at the end of the headset cable.

But this was not the day for my son’s first flight. The wind was 40 degrees to the left of Runway 32 at 12 gusting to 22 knots.  A Gulfstream at Bedford had reported a 20 knot wind sheer at 500 feet on landing.  Turbulence and low-level wind sheer alerts were given for several locations in the area.  I sat in the plane at Lawrence for a minute feeling the wind bounce the plane on the ground wondering if I should fly.  I knew that the wind coming over the hill on the left of the final approach to Runway 32 would give me quite a ride over the buildings and wires butting up against the approach end of the runway.  I watched several higher-performance planes land.  And I decided to give it a try.

I took off and flew in the direction of Plum Island to practice commercial maneuvers.  Several very talented instructors have tried to help me get the commercial over the years, but something in me could just never get the big picture needed to fly the visual maneuvers that were described as “easy” by so many people, and I was beginning to feel the itch again to go for the commercial and instructor ratings.  I wondered before takeoff if there would be much training value to flying in such wild conditions, but the wind smoothed out beautifully passing through 2000 feet.  I tried steep turns, and they felt effortless.  I tried chandelles, and they worked!  I was so excited I did them again and again and again.  Months of going out with no intention but to become “one with the plane” and practicing private maneuvers over and over again, of choosing aiming points all over the runway to break myself of habits and get “the picture,” of yearning to become so at one with the machine that I could tell what the plane would do seconds (many seconds) before it happened.  And today it all fell into place.  It was amazing.  Maybe it was luck.

I flew back to Lawrence to practice landing in the wind.  I was instructed by the controller to follow an Arrow back to the airport, a plane flying so high approaching the airport that I would never have found him on my own and wondered if he would even be able to land from such heights.  And then I remembered my primary instructor’s advice to fly a steep approach to Runway 32 on windy days to reduce the time spent in the turbulence coming over the hill to the left on final approach.  I remembered him telling me one day that he had passed the point of teaching me to be safe and was now trying to teach me some technique.  I remembered my days in gliders being instructed to approach at best glide speed plus half the headwind to make good progress into the wind, plus the gust to protect against wind sheer on gusty days.  I remembered my dreams of being “Joe Pilot” and touching down just at the stall with the nose up and the wheels quietly chirping in the gentle sequence  upwind wheel, then downwind wheel, then nose wheel.  After a few perfectly decent landings, I flew the final approach at 70 knots instead of the usual 65, and ended with the left wing firmly down, the rudder full right, the nose high, the stall warning light burning, and the wheels touching down left wheel, right wheel, nose wheel.  I’m not saying I didn’t scare anyone in the control tower, but the controller’s voice never wavered from his usual calm and pleasant banter wafting over the air.

Amazing.  So much learned today.  This is why flying is not about getting somewhere, not about shooting approaches, not about mastering complicated machines, not about technology, not even about showing off to my son.  This is Zen and the Art of Flying.  This is the drug that has me hooked.  This is what flying is all about: Flying is all about flying.